The Telegram
by Jessie D
Summary: This is a story about Joe before he met Polly. Hanna has to go to Iceland to study a Viking village that has mysteriously appeared. She asks Joe for his help. Together they find more than they'd hoped for. Loaded with romance and adventure.
1. Chapter 1

The character Joe Sullivan in not my own character but Hanna Lance and Mr Edward Johansen are.

It all began with a telegram, written as follows:

Dear Miss Hanna Lance stop

_I have wonderful news stop I have found a deserted Viking village in a part of the island that I have not yet discovered stop I suggest that you get here as soon as possible as we want to beat the competition full stop_

_Best regards Mr Edward Johansen_

The island was Iceland in the Atlantic sea and I went to the only person I knew who had flown a Tiger T-3A that far a distance. He was not up for it in the beginning since it was the second year of the Second World War and he felt that he had to defend his country, the lovely shores of Britain, but after some persuading, he came around and flew me to Iceland. We landed on a cold May morning and Mr Johansen was there to greet us.

"How do you know him again?" Joe asked Hanna as they walked to the car where the man was waiting.

"He wrote to me a few months ago and asked for my opinion on a find he had discovered. I don't know him personally, in fact this is the first time I have heard of him. He must have written a paper on Vikings but I haven't read it. Since we don't know him, you be nice this time."

"What do you mean "this time"? I was more than nice to that brat you where working with last year. It was he who couldn't take the ale, I only happened to help him into a police cell…"

"What do you mean by that?" Hanna wanted to know but before Joe could answer, they had reached the car and Mr Johansen.

"Welcome to Iceland, Miss Lance, it is a pleasure to have you here… and who is this?" he asked and as he turned to face Joe, he barely hid the expression of dislike that crossed his face.

"Captain Joe Sullivan and the feeling's mutual." Joe said and gave Mr Johansen a big cruel smile. "What you would want to do on this bit of ice is beyond me," he continued looking round, he eyed the scenery with its open landscape and the distant hills.

"We are looking for Viking artefacts that are said to be in the area. So if you would come this way Miss Lance, I will show you the dig and the Village".

"This is the village," Mr Johansen said spreading his arms wide to the wooden buildings that where raised there. The Longhouse, which was the main house, was about eight feet high and the houses looked like normal houses except from the way they were built; the structure was rectangular with only one room, the smallest house with the roof nearly touching the ground.

"The buildings are nearly new, that's the strange thing, it is as if they where built yesterday."

"But that is impossible!" Hanna exclaimed and started to inspect the wood on the closest house. They were built in the stile of the early Vikings but archaeologists do not know much about the period.

"Miss Lance, this is what you are here for, I need your expertise as a fellow archaeologist to decide the authenticity of these finds and to discover why they where not found before. I will leave you now, so look around and I will be by the dig which is to the north of here," he said and pointed to the left of the main building. When he had gone, Joe started to scrape on the wood with his penknife.

"That's odd; if you scrape of the surface-wood then it is new wood underneath not old and rotten as it should be if it was over a thousand years old."

"Let me see that," Hanna asked coming closer to see for herself. "Yes, your right. And now that I think about it, these are the wrong type of buildings for Iceland. The first Viking settlers didn't have much wood so they built parts of their houses into the earth in order to keep the warm air in. I wonder if Mr Johansen knows this?" Hanna was now getting puzzled. There had been a feeling of wrongness when she first landed on the island but she had dismissed it as nerves. Now she felt that the whole scene was wrong, the buildings and Mr Johansen. Why had she not heard of him before?

Since Hanna was preoccupied by her own thoughts, Joe started to wander. He walked round all the buildings but found nothing out of the ordinary, well it looked normal to him, he didn't know about Hanna. He never liked history when he was in school; he had always been planning a new prank. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He liked Hanna but history seemed to come between them. She was from a richer family than Joe was and it seemed to matter to her parents, who had a firm grip on the girl, still, even if she had turned 26 and lived on her own. Joe stopped to tie his shoelace on his worn army boots when he noticed something on the ground. It was halfway out of the earth and covered with mud. He picked it up and cleaned it on his sleeve.

"Hanna, get over here! I've found something!" he shouted and she came running over. "Look at this, isn't it lovely?" he asked in amazement, the thing that he had found was a small silver figure of a woman.

"Well, that is neat; Joe Williams actually thinks something historical is "lovely". That is a silver pendent of the goddess Freya. She represents fertility but she was also the midwife's guardian. When there's a battle half of the amount of fallen go to her home, Folkvang, where it is supposed they live in happiness, and the other half to her husband Odin, who is the wisest and most powerful Asagod," Hanna said realising that she had talked without being interrupted, not even once by Joe, who did not like history. "What? Why are you so quiet?" she asked and blushed. He stared at her with a twinkle in his eyes. "You seem to know a lot about her," he commented, sending another blush to her cheeks.

"She is the topic of my paper which I'm writing at the moment. It is about whether she and Thor, the Thundergod, in an earlier period of the Viking era were real people who later became the gods we know today. Where did you find this?" she asked giving the pendent back to him. Joe showed her the place and described the way it had stuck out of the earth. "It looked nearly like as if it had been dropped and the trod on."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any more finds here, this must have come from the dig but that is a few yards from here. It didn't just grow feet and walk here itself. Why would anyone be carrying this around?" Hanna asked, frowning.

Joe walked off to see if he could find more artefacts that someone might have left behind, when Hanna called out in rage. She had entered a house and found modern equipment and furniture inside. The walls were the kind that you built the modern houses with and the floor was not earth as she had expected but cement. When Joe came running to see what all the fuss was about, he found her going through the papers that were laid out on the table. "This is incredible!" she exclaimed, "This is a record of the area and it says here, that they haven't found any artefacts at all. That means that the dig is just a set up, a fake!"

"But why then have they brought us here?" Joe asked coming closer to stand next to her, "and why isn't the pendant recorded as a find?"

"Let's gather all the facts we know: the pendant is a real find, but they haven't recorded it in their logbook," he continued. "The village that they brought you here to inspect is a fake, and so is the dig. That leaves us with one question. Which side is this Mr Johansen on, is he a part of this or can we trust him?"

"No time to answer that, someone's coming. Quick, run!" Hanna whispered and they bolted for the door that was on the opposite side of the room. Joe closed the door at the same time as the person opened the door they first entered by. They were catching their breath when Mr Johansen came round the corner of the house and found them.

"Ah, there you are. I have been looking for you for some time. Find anything interesting?" he asked as he was walking towards them. "What is it you are holding, Captain Williams?" He had noticed the silver pendant that Joe now tried to hide but too late. He had to hand it over to Mr Johansen who looked shocked to see it, but then again tried to hide his true feeling without great success.

"Ah… I-I'd better take a closer look at this…. I'll keep it in my lab for the time being," he muttered and walked away, he had already forgotten about Hanna and Joe who took their chance and made their escape to the airfield.

Resting against Joe's plane Hanna closed her eyes and tried to stay calm. She could not bare that creep having the pendant of Freya.

"How are we to get it back?" She yelled to the distant hills as Joe climbed out of the cockpit.

"We need a plan, and I think I have got one. Let's call it operation Rescue Freya."


	2. Chapter 2

The Village lay in darkness when Hanna and Joe finally got into action. They had been waiting for darkness to come and now that it had come, they felt a chill down their spine as they sneaked past the row of houses, the silence amplifying even the smallest sounds to become deafening to their ears. Hanna reached the final house and peered round the corner to see if the coast was clear. As she strained her eyes to see in the darkness she caught a faint light moving away from the place where she was standing.

"They are moving… should we follow them?" Hanna asked Joe, her voice strained to a whisper.

"We need to see what they are doing and where they are hiding whatever they actually find, because they are finding something. Let's go!" he said as he moved past her and after the lights in the distance and Hanna followed him.

The line of light, torchlight in fact, vanished suddenly and Joe ran the last few yards to close the gap between them and the torchbearers. When Hanna caught up with him, he whispered to her to keep low and follow him. They had come upon a cave entrance. The lights continued inside but when Joe was about to follow Hanna called him back.

"Are you sure about this? Should we just follow them inside? We don't even know if there is a way out once we're in!"

"Relax, they don't know we're following them," he said and gave her a confident grin showing off his white teeth.

"You'd rush into anything, wouldn't you?" Hanna remarked.

"Yeah, and you will never get anything done if you don't take a chance and do it."

"There is no harm in thinking before rushing into something that's all I'm saying. And I do get things done! I just take my time doing them," she snapped at him.

"Well now we're doing them in my pace, because they are leaving and this might be our only chance. Now!" Joe whispered and grabbed Hanna's arm and pulled her to the entrance to the cave. The entrance was in fact the entrance to a tunnel, leading deep into the mountain. They followed the wall, having no light to go by, walking crouched under the low ceiling. Joe, who led the way, entered the cave first and stopped dead in his tracks. Hanna, who was following behind Joe, walked into him. In front of them lay an open cave, lit by torches, about half the size of a football pitch in width and about the same in height. Stacked in rows against the walls were stones runes carved on them and boxes filled with jewels. Hanna started to look through the nearest box, and found to her amazement the jewellery and armour that was rumoured to be owned by Freya and Thor.

"Hanna, have a look at this!" Joe said standing a few feet away, looking at the rune stones.

"I can't believe my eyes!" she gasped after examining the runes. "These runes tell the story of Freya and Thor!" Hanna walked from stone to stone reading the messages that where carved on them. She rummaged in her bag, looking for her camera. When she found it, she took photographs of the stones, the jewels and the armour.

"Hanna we'd better go, they will be back soon," Joe said and came over to her.

"I hate leaving it all here," Hanna said with a sigh and put the camera back into her bag.

They ran back down the tunnel but this time something had changed. The floor of the tunnel was slippery and hard to walk on, as if it suddenly had turned to ice. Hanna slipped and her bag fell out of her hands, her camera falling out and skidding across the floor.

"Hanna, get up!" Joe yelled and ran back for her. He pulled her up and pushed her forward, forcing her to run the few yards to the entrance and out into the light.

"My camera, Joe!" Hanna shouted back at him and he hesitated. Did he have time to go back for it?

Mr Johansen was waiting for them when they came through the tunnel and into the first light of dawn.

"How long were we in there?" Hanna asked Joe but Mr Johansen spoke before he could answer.

"Far too long. I am afraid that you two have become quite a nuisance to me, so I have decided to get rid of you. Karl, Fredrik, take them to the cliff and shoot them." Mr Johansen said and gave Hanna an evil smile. "I am sure that Captain Williams will be a gentleman and offer to be shot first, don't worry dear. Life goes on or in your case, not," he said and walked off laughing.

"That insolent little-... " Joe began but came to his senses. "Hanna, here is our chance. When I say go, run for the airfield."

"What about you?" she asked but at that moment, he rammed one of the men and shouted at her to run. She ran as fast as she could, trying not to think of what Joe was doing, letting her get away. Well she didn't get that far. Hanna raced up to the Tiger T-3A and found that the canopy wouldn't open. Typical! she thought and tried to force it open, without any success.

"Hanna, get in!" Joe shouted as he came running towards her with the two men after him, one limping badly and the other supporting a broken arm.

"I can't. It won't open!" she said her voice breaking with panic.

"Get out of the way!" he shouted and she moved to let him open the canopy to the cockpit. He did so by banging the left corner twice and the hitting the top with his fist.

"A little force and anything will open. Now, get in. Let's get away from here." Hanna climbed in and he came after her, closing the canopy and starting the engine. They flew into the air with a roar and sailed into the blue sky.

"Let's never go there again." He muttered relived to be on his way back home to England, when Hanna put her hand on his shoulder.

"Look, there to the left, two o' clock." Five planes were coming their way and as they flew closer, Joe saw that they were in attack formation.

"Uh-o, that doesn't look good," he muttered under his breath. "Hang on!" Joe turned to his right and the enemy planes flew past them. He flew in a half circle, turning to face the planes that were between him and England.

"No one gets between me and England!" he yelled and charged, his machineguns firing at the planes and they returned fire. After flying round in circles without any great victories against the enemy planes, Joe realised that he could loose them by drawing them in to British airspace. The RAF in the area would then deal with them.

After a few hours of flying, he finally saw the shores of England; he never had appreciated that sight as much as he did now. True enough, when he drew closer to land a group of ten airplanes rose into the air from below and he got radio contact with the leader.

"Identify yourself Tiger T-3A," the voice said in the intercom.

"This is Sky Captain, just taking a turn. Could you help me loose these bugs I've got on my tail?"

"Of course, Sky Captain, this is Wing Leader, formation Delta and fan out." The leader said and flew past Joe, who headed towards land. They landed at Suffolk airfield.

"Now, really this airfield does not exist to the public..." Joe remarked trying to smile at her.

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not here and can therefore not be seeing what I am seeing." Hanna answered tiredly.

Joe drove the plain to its hanger, where he parked it and got out.

"How are you feeling, Hanna?" he asked with a worried look in his green eyes. "You've been in worse mix-ups the last times you flew with me and then you were still the fire-y- self you usually are."

"Thanks a lot!" Hanna muttered sourly. "I'm just bitter that I lost my camera. Without it, Mr Johansen will still be free and not behind bars, that should be his natural habitat."

"Are you sure you lost it…" Joe asked with a knowing grin.

"What are you not telling me?" Hanna enquired moving closer, forcing Joe to back up against the plane.

"Right you've got me. I went back for the camera." He said razing his arm to shield himself from the rage attack that Hanna would have for him not telling her. But it never came. Instead, he felt her arms around him, hugging him, and felt that she was shaking.

"Hanna, what's wrong?" he said worried and made her look at him. She wasn't crying as he first thought but laughing.

"You- You are you, and I love you for it," she said and looked lovingly into his eyes.

"Well, how to answer to that? It is so unexpected. How about: I've loved you from the first moment I met you."

"Did you really?"

"Of course I did. Are you questioning my reasons? Let's just stick to I love you and you love me."

"Fine by me," Hanna agreed and they walked off hand in hand across the airfield.

"How about I teach you how to fly?"

"As long as you are in the plane with me."

"I wouldn't be anywhere else."

There might be some of you that are wondering if the story ends this way, too sloppy for you? Well Hanna and Joe expose Mr Johansen as the villain he really is. As for Hanna's paper on Freja, she returns to Iceland to finish her discovery and this time Joe actually was interested in history. Or as he said it: "Shut up and continue discovering."


End file.
